"All the same," it said obstinately," he ought to be locked up."

It was the silent Mr Goneram who started it. No doubt the strain of the unusual meal was responsible, but whatever the initial cause, he suddenly spluttered and then burst into a roar of laughter. The ludicrous stubbornness of Lady Pilth appealed to some hidden sense of humour in the man, and he went off like a rocket. One by one the passengers followed his example, until all but the Conliffes and the Pilths were under the sway of a semihysterical laughter. Even Peter Brown could could not resist it, though he was the first to

recover.

Gradually the spontaneous merriment died down, to be replaced by a strained and shamefaced silence. Mr Goneram was easily the most embarrassed of the party. A self-contained man, unused to meeting people in bulk, he had been shocked out of his reserve by the sudden and unexpected absurdity of. Lady Pilth, and now his ears burned with mortification at the enormity of his behaviour. During the remainder of the meal, the crown of his head was all that was visible to the passengers over whom he presided. He did not dare to raise his eyes from his plate.

An even more embarrassed member of the party, however, was Charlie Conliffe. He could not look up without finding the eyes of Lady Pilth fixed

upon him accusingly. He did his utmost to ignore them— to forget them-but their fascination was too strong for him, and his own were drawn irresistibly back to read again the implacable hatred that was plain in them.

He could not have borne it of his own strength, so had to fortify himself from without with double whiskies, three of which he put away in the course of dinner, and even then the accusing eyes were as much as he could bear.

The meal dragged on miserably for all but the Honourable Stephen Corris, who attacked his food with a doubled gusto, spiced as it was by the stupid little scene that had been enacted for his delectation. He was the only member of the party who made any effort at conversation, and his attempts to drag the Cohun Balkes, Captain Spedley even Sir Evan Pilth-into a general talk met with nothing more encouraging than frozen monosyllables.

At Mr Goneram's table it was even worse. He himself was sunk beneath the load of his own shame. Jocelyn Upton and her mother retired within their strong English shells of reserve. Murray and Scrymgeour remained, as usual, hidden away in their still stronger Scottish ones. Honiton, whom one might have counted upon to infuse a little life into the party, was content to eat his dinner in silence, and keep an inscrutable face, while Peter

Brown was too full of pity for Joan Conliffe to notice, much less to break, the general silence.

Even whisky did not serve to support Charlie to the end against the impeachment in Lady Pilth's compelling eyes. There came a moment when he could stand it no longer. The constant accusation was wearing him down. He staggered to his feet and, with a thick semi-articulate mutter, lurched off down the saloon, looking everywhere but in the direction of his enemy. Yet in the doorway he could not resist the fascination of a last glance, only to find that the vindictive eyes were following him, were drilling holes through him with the fury of their hatred. With a cry of horror, Charlie bolted

up the companion for the sanctuary of the deck smokingroom. There at least he was safe, and not only safe, but in a position to administer first-aid to himself. He sat down to an evening of serious .drinking, and the more deeply he drank, the less assured did he become of his own inno

cence.

The dinner petered out. There was no lingering over coffee, but rather a general tendency to fly apart-to get clean away from the embarrassment of one another's company. It is safe to say, however, that, apart from the Pilths, no one was inclined to take the matter of Charlie Conliffe's guilt seriously, with the exception of Charlie himself.

The two days that followed were remarkable more for the growth of ideas and relationships than for wealth of incident. The weather was calm and mild, and but for the theft and the uncertainty to which it had given rise, the trip from Malta to Gibraltar would have been exceedingly pleasant. There were few amongst the passengers, however, who were unaffected by the robbery in one way or another. Murray and Scrymgeour followed their usual course unmoved, but even they were indirectly affected through Charlie Conliffe, who spent much of his

time in the smoking-room with them.

The Honourable Stephen Corris would frequently join them. Anxious to gossip over the possibilities of the case, he found few amongst his fellowpassengers willing to reciprocate, and it was sheer lack of an audience that drove him to the smoking-room in the first instance. Once there, however, he found in Charlie Conliffe a never-failing source of excitement. The unfortunate suspect became more and more uncertain of his own innocence. At every meal the accusing eyes of Lady Pilth drove him

into a fresh desperation, and after each ordeal he had recourse again to the only remedy he knew.

He could talk of nothing else, and Corris would sit for hours, fascinated, while Charlie, in an ever-increasing state of drunkenness, rambled disconnectedly over the pros and cons of the affair. At one moment he would be loud in assertion of his innocence, at the next he might be picturing vividly just how he could have accomplished the theft. It was the uncertainty of it all that held Corris.

The two Scotchmen looked on contemptuously, smoking their pipes steadily, and taking their regulation drinks-neither more nor less-at their stated times. Alone together, they summed up the position unhesitatingly.

"It's the drink. He canna haud it, an' he's let it get the better o' him. A doot he'll end bad. As for that sneakin' wee body, Corris, he juist leads him on. He'd dae onything if he thocht he micht learn something ill aboot a body."

Thus Scrymgeour, and Murray would nod his whole-hearted agreement.

They themselves always assured Conliffe of their belief in his innocence, but no assurance could be strong enough to counteract the steady torture of Lady Pilth's eyes. He was driven more and more to drink for relief, yet it brought him none, but rather an increased uncertainty. He awoke in the

mornings in such a state of quivering nerves that he had to steady his trembling hand with a stiff whisky before he dared attempt to shave. From that until night he got on with artificial strength-never drunk, yet never sober. Meals gradually became a mere farce, and rather than meet Lady Pilth's eye he stopped away altogether -but that is anticipating events.

His wife made ineffectual protests. He would agree with her-even promise reform-and go his own way. She grew more silent, dark rings appeared round her eyes, and she spent much time alone in her cabin.

Peter Brown tried to renew the intimacy that had sprung up between them, unavailingly. He could not understand the look of fear that was in her eyes when he spoke to her. He could not know that it was the fear of the working of her own heart, and, with all his brooding, he could find nothing to account for it beyond his refusal to tell her what was not his to tell. That, he knew, was not enough. It might have aroused dislike, distrust, but not the look he caught in her eyes when he dared to speak to her.

The detective was not the man to probe such a matter as this to its depths. Diffident, unused to thoughts of womenkind, he was the last man on earth to guess the feelings towards him that she feared and hid. He could but acquiesce in her apparent desire to be

quit of him, and retire into his deck-chair with a book, more like a collapsed scaffolding than before.

For all her horror of the crime and its unknown perpetrator, Jocelyn Upton was perhaps the least permanently affected by it amongst the passengers. She was young and high-spirited, intensely interested in her own thoughts and feelings, and endowed with a great capacity for the enjoyment of life. It could not be expected that she would continue long under the oppression with which the first shock of the discovery of the robbery overwhelmed her.

More than ever was she thrown into the society of Frank Honiton. When she and her mother had met him in a hotel in Cairo, they had been alone and without even an acquaintance, and his easy friendliness had quickly fostered an intimacy which the narrow boundaries of the Bedouin were destined to ripen infinitely more quickly than could have happened on land.

Mrs Upton, quiet and colourless, was little of a companion to her spirited daughter, and was content to let her find amusement where she would. Honiton, from the beginning, had impressed her favourably, and she had no misgivings about throwing the two young people together. Everything, therefore, was in favour of their natural attraction towards one another developing into love. It was inevitable.

Honiton was inclined to be unaccountably subdued on the day following upon the events that have been recorded. Indeed, since his conversation with Jocelyn upon the subject of theft, he had lost something of the buoyant gaiety that had distinguished him. Jocelyn rallied him on his dulness. They were seated in their usual chairs on deck, the silent detective their only near neighbour.

"You have something on your mind, Frank. I know it! " she said, her bright face smiling on him prettily. "Let me be your father confessor. You'll feel all the better for it. Perhaps you'll even be capable of making yourself reasonably agreeable."

Honiton smiled slowly, and with an effort screwed himself up to meet her on her own plane.

"Are you sure you could bear the awful revelation of my misdeeds?" he asked.

"Oh, we confessors get hardened, you know," retorted Jocelyn. "It takes a lot to shock us. Have no fear of me, even if you have to disclose the horrible story of how, in your youth, you once nearly robbed an orchard."

"Even that you could bear, notwithstanding your intense dislike of thieves?"

It is curious how Honiton was impelled to introduce the subject that had caused him acute discomfort on the previous day, almost as though he was determined to prove his own mastery over himself.